Otterly Ridiculous
by Niente Zero
Summary: In which the boy is father to the man, and a young Ben runs away when he shouldn't, and doesn't when he probably should. Unlike my previous story, this contains a minimal angst quotient. I promise more angst next time. Oops. Changed rating. Not really M!


_Disclaimer: I own all the characters except for three, but one of those three happens to be the most important. I don't own Benton Fraser. I would keep him in my pocket and take him out to gaze upon frequently if I did. I am not making money off messing about in someone else's playground._

Benton: No, that's an old scar.

Elaine: How d'you get it?

Benton: I - I'd rather not say. (Elaine gives him a look) Someone struck me. With a sea otter.

Elaine: Hm. I guess that's what happens in a country with gun control.

Benton: Oh, I believe he shot the otter first.

-The Deal

The male sea otter can reach up to one hundred pounds in weight, and nearly five feet in length, a not inconsiderable size for a blunt instrument.

The main thing to know about the school in Tuktoyaktuk, in the Northwest Territories of Canada, was that it was small. The town itself was not populous, no more than three hundred families, and so the schoolhouse had to make shift for the students with few teachers and a lot of ingenuity. Students of different grades shared classrooms and teachers depending on how many children of each age there were that year.

It was a frosty morning in late spring when Ann Whittaker, the sweetly spoken kindergarten teacher, and the more acerbic but generally fair-minded Lisa Julius, the teacher for grades four, five, and six, were watching the children arrive at school from the window of the small teacher's lounge, hands warmed by cups of industrial strength coffee. A childish drama was playing out on the asphalt outside the building.

A dark haired boy of about eleven years of age was walking toward the school building, deeply engrossed in a large book about Egyptian history, ignoring the mayhem around him of the other children playing before the school bell rang. Though his fingers were wrapped in warm gloves he was adeptly turning the pages, keen eyes scanning the text. A little girl who looked perhaps a year or two younger than him, wearing a bright pink parka and purple snow boots, ran up with pigtails flying from under her hat.

"Ben!" the girl exclaimed, breathless half from shyness and half from running across the playground from where her little clique of friends sat giggling and peeking at them. The boy looked up from his book and gave her a quizzical glance before reluctantly snapping the book shut and shoving it back into his satchel.

"Good morning, Sally." he said, features softening so that half of his mouth quirked into a smile, though his eyes remained guarded and curious.

"Ben, I baked this for you with my Mom last night," Sally said, the words coming out in a rush as she handed him a small tupperware container. Ben opened it with an expression of surprise, which soon turned into appreciation, the smile broadening to show gleaming teeth, and eyes crinkling with pleased anticipation. "Why, thank you kindly, Sally." He examined the pink frosted cupcake within, inhaling its warm sweet scent.

Sally apparently lost her nerve at the sight of this smile, and covering all of her face but her eyes with her hands, ran off toward her friends, giggling madly. Ben continued toward the school building, savoring the cupcake, as the first bell telling the students to head to class rang.

Ann Whittaker turned to Lisa Julius, with a demure snicker.

"That one is going to be quite the lady-killer in a few years."

Lisa grinned in return, a somewhat rare sight. "Yes, Ben certainly has a way about him."

"You had him in your class last year, didn't you?" Ann asked, as they moved toward the hallway to go to their own classrooms.

"I did. He was in my fifth grade section. Very studious young man. He'll go far. I was quite annoyed that he was skipped ahead a grade into John's class."

Ann grimaced, a dainty look of displeasure on her normally mild face. John Sullivan, who taught the seventh and eighth graders, was at heart a gym teacher. Tuktoyaktuk had to take what it could get. While Ben Fraser was adept on skates, and had a great love of the outdoors, he was smaller than the other boys in the seventh and eighth grades, and more bookish.

"The other kids are used to Ben going around with his nose in a book." Lisa said wryly. "They got over the shock of seeing someone voluntarily do what to them is a dire task pretty quickly, considering." She looked around the corridor as she and Ann arrived at her classroom, making sure that John Sullivan was not in earshot.

"But John Sullivan has all the imagination and sensibility of a slab of freshly poured concrete, and I'll be damned if I see him tread on that boy's spirit."

Ann looked slightly shocked at her colleague's outburst and language, but before she could say anything, the second bell rang, and she had to hurry off to take charge of her class of rambunctious five and six year olds before they could complete the finger-painting of every flat surface in the room.

Ben Fraser looked around the seventh and eighth grade classroom from his seat in the front row as John Sullivan read the roll call. He noticed one absence with a little relief. One of the eighth graders, a hulking fifteen year old named Carl Johnson, whose growth spurt had turned him into a man among boys, was not leaning in his chair, head against the back wall of the classroom, feet swinging, chewing his fingernails, as he usually was at the start of the school day.

Sullivan called out "Johnson." three times before saying with exasperation, "Has anyone seen Carl today?"

This was met with sullen silence. As the star eighth grade hockey player, it was well known that Carl Johnson was Sullivan's favorite student. It was also well known that Carl had a habit of taking off occasionally to go hunting or fishing to stock his mother's larder.

Ben had heard Sullivan say "Gotta make allowances for the kid. It's rough on him with his dad out on the rigs. Kid's trying to take care of his family." on other occasions when the big boy had not come to school. Ben's quick mind couldn't see how Carl's dad being away was any excuse for bad behavior. Tuktoyaktuk was full of children whose fathers were on the oil rigs, or mechanics on the natural gas pipeline, or out on fishing trawlers for weeks at a time. For that matter... Well, Ben knew that there was a good reason his own father had to be away, of course. Being a mountie was important.

Ben felt a sense of relief that Carl was not around today to make trouble. The bigger boy had been growing restless and when he was restless he tended to take it out on any target smaller than him. Not Ben, not since an after school incident where Carl'd learned that though the Fraser boy was a lightweight compared to him, he already knew how to throw a punch, and would not hesitate to fight back fiercely, no matter how Carl pounded on him.

Carl's favorite targets were the fourth and fifth graders and when he was in a bullying mood, Ben felt he had to give over his lunch hour to keeping an eye on the younger ones. People looking out for each other was part of what made the small town special.

After roll call, Sullivan started reviewing the spelling quiz from the day before. Ben's mind wandered. He knew he had all the words right because they were all words he had seen many times in library books. Instead, he thought about Sally and the cupcake, feeling, along with a certain amount of pleasure, a deep confusion and embarrassment as he remembered her telling him she baked it just for him. He wasn't sure why he was embarrassed, but then he also really wasn't sure why she'd given him the cupcake. Girls were so, so, impossible to understand.

"Mister Fraser, if you wouldn't mind bringing your formidable intellect back to the classroom", he heard Sullivan say in a mocking tone of voice. He blinked and started.

"Ah..."

"If you could come to the chalkboard and demonstrate problem number five, if it's not too much trouble."

The class had moved on to the previous night's math homework while Ben daydreamed. He could hear the petty triumph in Sullivan's voice at catching Lisa Julius's pet student out. Some of the other students snickered, while some gave the dreamy boy sympathetic looks from behind their math texts.

The rest of the morning passed uneventfully. Ben was struggling a little to catch up with some of the material as he had skipped a grade, and the sevens and eights were working at closer to eighth grade level in some subjects anyway. For some of the students, eighth grade would be the last schooling they got before they dropped out to join their fathers in the oil or fishing industries. If not for Sullivan, Carl would have been one of those students, but Sullivan wanted to keep the boy in school long enough to develop his natural talent for hockey. His own dreams had been foreshortened in every way possible when he washed up teaching in Tuktoyaktuk. It would surprise no-one that he was still trying to live them out through the promising young athlete.

When the lunch bell rang, the kids rushed for the door, chairs squealing as they were pushed out from desks, and books banging shut. Ben hung back politely, catching up with a group of boys at the door.

"Hurry up, Ben!" Mark, a tall, athletic boy who was a natural leader among them said. "Let's head down to the ditch." The boys would go down most lunch times to mess around in the deep drainage ditch full of snow on the edge of the schoolyard, coming back to class afterwards cold, wet, and raucous with laughter and chatter.

It was awfully tempting, but when Ben put his head around the door he saw Sally sauntering very slowly down the corridor, and he quickly retreated, holding up his book.

"No, thank you. I think I'll stay inside for lunch. I just got up to the bit about mummification. Did you know that the ancient Egyptians used to preserve bodies by pulling the brains out through the nose with a special hook?" he shared this piece of grisly information with the look of mischievous delight exclusive to a small boy in possession of a grotesque fact. All the other boys "Ewwww"d and "Grooosss"d in a most satisfying manner as they hurried off to eat and play outside.

After checking the hallway for lurking girls, Ben went to Mrs Julius's classroom where lunch was held on inclement days. Miss Whittaker was on duty to oversee the classroom that lunch time, so it was a tranquil retreat, with a handful of other students, most from lower grades, staying in out of the cold. Ben told himself that he was staying inside because he was up to the exciting part of his book. It was nothing to do with a certain girl with pigtails. Or perhaps it was better to admit that he should stay away from Sally until he could figure out what on earth she wanted. Maybe there was a book in the library for that too. He scratched his head in puzzlement over that, before settling down to eat and read quietly.

There was a commotion at the door as Miss Whittaker said in a flustered, high pitched voice "You can't bring that in here, Carl, go outside at once", her hands waving ineffectually.

One of the seventh graders said in a loud stage whisper "I guess we know where Carl's been now."

Carl was wearing wading boots and thick olive pants and a parka, his appearance not particularly astonishing for the Arctic region. What stood out was the large, extremely dead marine mammal that he held in both hands. It had clearly been shot; part of the head was blown away exposing the strong jaw. As Carl stepped into the center of the room he started to swing the dead beast over his head.

Ben's protective instinct toward the beloved kindergarten teacher and the smaller children in the room, some of whom had started to cry, kicked in in full force. He put his book down and stepped forward.

"Miss Whittaker, please go and find Mr Sullivan." he said, trying to keep his voice calm but aware that it was coming out as more of a squeak than a command.

"Now, Carl, be reasonable." he said, making eye contact with the bigger boy. "Put the otter down, and we can talk."

Although Ben was willing to scrap if it came to it, he truly believed what his father had taught him; that the best way to win a fight was not to get into one. Particularly not with someone wielding a large, toothy club.

Carl laughed, a crazy glint in his eye, and swung the otter at Ben. Ben ducked out of the way, and backed up.

"Don't do anything stupid, Carl." He said. This seemed to be a red rag to Carl.

"You calling me stupid, dork-wad?" He demanded, closing in on Ben, who found himself backed into a desk. Ben stepped sideways, eyes wide.

"Of course not. Just set the otter down, there's no need for violence." Even as Ben said it, voice shaking, he heard how ridiculous it sounded. Obviously the boy felt a need for violence, he was swinging a dead otter over his head.

One of the frightened children made a break for the door. Ben had to side step again to avoid tripping on her, and found himself right in the line of the animal. He leaned back, but Carl made contact, the skull and teeth of the otter moving with the full force of its dead weight and Carl's strength to rip through the sweater and shirt Ben was wearing, leaving a nasty, jagged, bruised laceration.

"That will need stitches." Ben thought to himself, looking at it with incredulity. He found himself sitting down suddenly, light headed, which was fortunate as the otter whizzed past over him. Carl was still swinging, now laughing like it was the funniest thing in the world.

"Oh well." Ben thought dizzily. "I think I just learned not to try to reason with a man armed with an aquatic animal." He wondered briefly about land mammals, the comparative danger of beavers, and then realized that he was reacting mostly out of shock.

The room was suddenly full of teachers. Mr Sullivan grabbed Carl's arms from behind, restraining him and forcing him to drop the otter as Ann Whittaker and Lisa Julius rushed over to Ben. Frankly, Ben thought Miss Whittaker was overdoing the fussing.

"I'm quite all right, Miss Whittaker," he said, trying to pull his sweater over the wound. "It was just an otter."

Lisa Julius snorted. "Come on, Ann, pull yourself together and let's get him to nurse to patch that up. Twenty years of teaching and I've never seen anything like it."

It took the school nurse a while to clean and stitch up Ben's chest. First, she had to be persuaded to stop gasping and exclaiming for long enough to do so, and then there was the matter of applying disinfectant one excruciating dab at a time, stopping in between to say "there, there. This won't hurt." which just made Ben wish she'd swab it out all in one agonizing go. He was stoic throughout, as if watching the whole process from outside his body. By the time the nurse was done, the local constable had arrived.

The constable bore a somewhat uncanny resemblance to Carl, which wasn't surprising, as the two young men were cousins of some close remove. Mr Sullivan was with the constable, and through the authority of law and force of personality, managed to persuade Lisa Julius that he would be an adequate in loco parentis figure to stay with Ben while the constable talked to him.

The constable squatted beside the low bed in the sick room, smiling uneasily at Ben.

"It's like this, son." he said. "I don't think we can bring a charge against young Carl. There's no law against hitting a person with a dead otter."

Sullivan nodded and grunted. "Shame, but it's true."

Ben looked back and forth between the two men with open disbelief. He was pretty sure that being hit with anything counted as a crime. The constable was wringing his hands together.

"Carl's not a bad boy." he said, not sounding terribly convinced, but knowing that his mom would kill him if her cousin's son went to prison for assault. "Boys will be boys, hey?" he tried a jocular laugh that rang false in Ben's ears.

Ben said nothing. He wasn't sure what would be best to do. He wished his father was there to advise him on how to handle the situation. It was clear that the men desperately wanted him not to press charges. Would his father have told him to man up and fight the injustice, or man up and accept a little roughhousing between boys? But Fraser Sr. wasn't due back in town for another week or two.

"There's a law against hitting someone with a live otter." The constable elaborated. "But not, you know, a dead one."

Well, if they wanted him to play stupid...

"Ahh." he said. The deciding factor may have been that he couldn't stand the thought of sitting through another discussion on why Carl was troubled. He sighed slightly, and rubbed his forehead in a way that was too old for his years. "I understand. There's no law against hitting someone with a dead otter. It's OK. Thank you kindly for your time, constable."

After the constable and Sullivan left, Ben leaned back in the sickroom bed to wait for his grandfather to come and pick him up. He heard the door to the sick room creak open. Thinking that it was the school nurse, he looked up, only to see the one person he most wanted to avoid. Fear flickered across his face and he wished the floor would open up and swallow him.

Sally.

She came into the room, a look of hero worship on her face.

"Ben, I saw it all through the window. You were sooo brave!" the girl exclaimed, leaning down to kiss him gently on the cheek.

Ben turned scarlet once more, a wide grin spreading across his face. Maybe the girl thing wasn't so bad after all.

**Author's notes: I hope you enjoyed my little foray into Fraser's youth. While I don't consider this to contain spoilers as such, obviously it owes a debt to The Deal, and corroborative details were taken from North and The Blue Line. Tuktoyaktuk is a real place in Inuvik in the Northwest Territories. The school Fraser attends is based on a small school I spent a couple of years at. (While we attended it, my brother was beaten up for wanting to play soccer when the Australian Rules football team needed another player. Hooray for bullying.) I tried to graze as close to canon as possible. I hope nobody minded my little bit of Ben/OC shipping ;)**

I think this wraps up my minor obsession with clearing up details of The Deal. I'm contemplating using a grown-up Carl for a fully fledged chapter based original action/adventure story for Ben and Ray. We'll see how that works out.


End file.
